Subtle Shift Quotes

Remember the movements that don't look like moving.

Maybe I'm a little more confident than I used to be, but not much.

One does not adopt a new idea, one slips into it.

All you really need to do is shift people just a tiny bit for change to happen. It doesn't have to be huge and humongous.

I always felt through writing that I wanted to rotate the world slightly.

Sometimes it boils down to a move or two and that makes all the difference.

And just like that, something inside shifted very subtly, so that all the empty spaces in him suddenly disappeared, so that his breath timed to hers, so that his blood sang. This is why there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that just didn’t have words big enough to describe them.

It's funny how things change slowly, until the day we realize they've changed completely.

I should say, a piece of advice that was given to me very early on by the principle of RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) which is where I went. When he auditioned me, he said, "Your speech, monologue, is fine. It's good. Yeah, I think you have ability but you're making it happen. Don't make it happen, let it happen." And that's a sort of subtle shift I think, as an actor.

History doesn't turn on a dime; it turns on a plugged nickel.

Sometimes we look for those thunderous things to happen in our life for our lives to change or go in the other direction. We seek the miracle. We seek the parting of the seas, the moving of the mountains. But no, it's a quiet thing. At least for me it was.

Transformation in real life is extraordinarily incremental, and that's all I'm going to say.

It might appear that nothing is happening, but that's actually when it really happens.

I made nothing happen very slowly.

I love that blurry place where life’s transitions are made without you even knowing it.

Just knowing that there's somebody else out there - that what's happened on this planet has also happened in many other places - that might change our lives in a very subtle way, but it's interesting to know and worth looking for.

Oh, the little more, and how much it is! And the little less, and what worlds away.

She thought she would know when it happened. But now, as she looked around, she wondered if it was really like that at all. Maybe it happened in a million different ways, when you were thinking of it and you weren't. Maybe there was no gap, no jump, no chasm. You didn't forget yourself all at once. Maybe you just looked around one time or another and you thought, Hey. And there you were.

What is it precisely, that feeling of 'returning' from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger - then it fades, but never completely.